


Of All the Fish

by lilactreesinwinter



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Life Choices, Linguistics, M/M, One smutty linguist joke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 19:56:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9253754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilactreesinwinter/pseuds/lilactreesinwinter
Summary: Phil reluctantly takes Dan to a meetup of his uni classmates and social awkwardness and contemplation of life choices ensue.Excerpt:Dan stalked along moodily in a black jumper despite the oppressive weather, his dark brows knit over his dark eyes, and his dark hair curled damply on his forehead. By the time they reached their goal, the sky had clouded over, and Phil felt thoroughly fed up with his partner.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I’m a linguist and love thinking about Phil and linguistics!
> 
> [Originally posted on Tumblr](https://phinalphantasy7.tumblr.com/post/150784250374/of-all-the-fish) on 22 September 2016.

It was a muggy summer Sunday in London as the District Line train creaked its way toward Richmond. Phil looked out the window at the increasingly leafy suburban view while Dan slumped in the seat beside him, fixated on his phone. They were heading toward a meetup at Kew Gardens of Phil’s classmates from his English Language and Linguistics course at the University of York. Phil hadn’t stayed in touch with most of his uni acquaintances—he’d hardly used his Linguistics degree, after all—but he’d been invited after one of them had watched him on YouTube. He had surprised himself with how much he had been looking forward to reconnecting with that part of his past—thinking about language, academic discussion, and the career he might have had.

Phil took Dan with him 99% of the time he left the house, but this meetup was meant to be part of the other 1%. He and Dan had agreed that it would be awkward, when they weren’t out as a couple, for Dan to come along to a social occasion with people who were part of Phil’s life before Dan. Anyway, Dan would be fine at home by himself for a few hours. 

But when Dan got up that morning, he wasn’t fine at all—he was in the grip of a full-blown existential crisis, his first in quite a while. “I’m sorry, Phil. I don’t know what has gotten into me today. But I really feel terrible right now.” Phil knew that while Dan’s preferred posture at such times was prone on the nearest horizontal surface, he really didn’t want to be left all alone. Thus they found themselves together on the Tube, both a bit grumpy with the compromise. Phil worried quite a bit when his boyfriend was in such a state, but he had been very much looking forward to the afternoon’s event and a chance to revisit another part of his life. He had recently been wondering—just a tiny bit—how his life had gotten to where it was, with the career he was pursuing, the place he was living, and the life partner he had chosen. This meetup might give him some perspective.

They walked to Kew Gardens from the station, navigated past the Palm House and Treetop Walkway, and made their way toward where the meetup was located. Dan stalked along moodily in a black jumper despite the oppressive weather, his dark brows knit over his dark eyes, and his dark hair curled damply on his forehead. By the time they reached their goal, the sky had clouded over, and Phil felt thoroughly fed up with his partner.

They found a dozen or so linguists and their spouses, surrounded by a tumble of small children, clustered on a lawn beside some trees. A man broke away from the group and came over to shake Phil’s hand.

“Hi, Phil! You remember me—Tom Wetherby. It’s good to see you again!” Tom turned toward Dan. “And this must be your—”

“I’m his flatmate!” exclaimed Dan. “Haha.”

“Er, yes, haha,” said Phil, suppressing a roll of his eyes. “My flatmate was having an existential crisis and so I had to bring him along.”

Tom looked at them strangely. “Oh, okay. Let me see about getting you some drinks.”

“I’ve got that covered!” said a jolly fellow, showing up with two plastic cups of red wine, while Tom drifted gratefully away. “Paul Sykes. I think I was the year behind you, Phil. Welcome back to our band of cunning linguists. Although…..” His gaze slid from Phil to Dan. Dan had partly turned away and pulled out his phone, but he chuckled and muttered, “FYI, I like vagina.”

Phil had had enough. “Paul,” he said brightly. “Could you introduce me to your wife and kids?” As he followed Paul, he saw a woman he remembered from uni bear down on Dan with a gleam in her eye. Normally when a woman expressed an interest in his partner, he would just quietly appear at his elbow until she picked up the vibe and left them alone. But now Phil decided to let Dan fend for himself while he joined in conversations about pseudo-cleft sentences and epenthesis in non-rhotic varieties of English.

Dan was awkward enough with the linguist who wanted to get to know him that he soon drove her away, and he detached from the group to sit under a tree, playing a game on his phone. Phil eventually stopped tracking him as he said hello to old classmates, heard about their professorships and research positions, and met their spouses and kids. He drank some more wine and nibbled on some food. The wine and the warm afternoon let him slip into a reverie about a different sort of life that he might have had, and maybe still could.

But as the afternoon wore on, the conversation became dominated by a couple of particularly tedious people who held fancy titles in a consulting firm and who droned on about how big data was the future of corpus linguistics. Phil was feeling less muzzy from the wine, and began to feel a great deal less enchanted by the idea of elevated academic discussions, never mind the idea of a job that required going to work in the morning wearing a suit.

A late-afternoon breeze was picking up as Phil got to his feet and saw that Dan was no longer sat under the tree. He looked around in a bit of a panic and caught the eye of a pleasant woman with brown curly hair and big brown eyes packing up some toys on a blanket nearby. “Are you looking for your friend? My little girl has taken him to see something under the trees over there.”

Phil looked up just as the sun was coming out and saw Dan walking toward him, silhouetted against the sky. He was smiling, and holding by the hand a small girl who was the spitting image of her mother. “Phil!” he said. “There’s a koi pond under the trees! We’ve always wanted a koi pond!”

As his heart filled with love, Phil was once again sure what he wanted in his future. A koi pond. And Dan. And, someday, his own little girl with Dan’s dark curls.


End file.
